Nov. 14 in Masters history

1896: This was the birthdate of first lady Mamie Eisenhower, who seemed to enjoy many trips to Augusta, particularly one of her last in the spring of 1971.

Her husband had promised a class at Monte Sano Elementary that he would visit the next time he was in town. Unfortunately, he passed away before that happened, so Mrs. Eisenhower returned to honor his pledge.

According to an account in The Augusta Chronicle-Herald, the former first lady spent a half-hour with the fourth-grade pupils, answering questions about her husband and her family.

After the class bell rang, the youngsters gathered around Eisenhower to get her autograph, but their teacher protested.

“No autographs – you will miss your bus,” she said.

A Secret Service agent – one of three with the former first lady – offered to collect the children’s papers, get them autographed, then return them.

But Eisenhower said no. “I’ll finish them here.”

That she did. And the buses waited, too.

1933: Clifford Roberts made a prediction.

In an interview published this day in The Augusta Chronicle, the executive chairman of the new Augusta National Golf Club said the upcoming Masters Golf Tournament would be a business and tourist bonanza for the host city.

It “will bring a tremendous amount of new business to this city, which will be felt directly or indirectly by every Augusta resident,” he said.

“There is already widespread interest in sports circles in New York in the event, and curiously enough, England seems to be as intensely interested in the competition as is America. The answer is, of course, Bobby Jones, conceded to be the greatest golfer of all time.”

Roberts, who was staying at the Partridge Inn, also expressed gratitude for the members of the Augusta National, who he called “generous in agreeing to give up the use of the course for a week each year, during the best part of the season, in order that the tournament might be played over the most famous golf course in America.”

He closed with a prediction that competition between the outstanding golfers of the world, who will be invited to enter the event, will attract visitors to Augusta, not only from every corner of the United States, but also from England and Europe.

2005: Golf course architect Alister MacKenzie, whose designs included Augusta National is inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Despite fame for his Augusta effort, MacKenzie would never see a Masters Tournament. He died two months before the first one in 1934.

A veteran of the Boer War, MacKenzie was struck with the success the enemy had in constructing defenses that played tricks with one’s depth perception. He used such techniques to add challenges in the design of his golf courses.

He and club co-founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts worked well together, and Roberts loved to recall MacKenzie’s many stories, told with “a rich Scottish burr.”